For the two past two decades, a child-centered view and integration
of curriculum have become critical to developing literacy. Also, the
emphasis on the importance of the teacher's role in teaching
literacy has increased (Stice, Bertrand, & Betrand, 1995 ;Goodman,
1989). Thus, teachers have been provided with the opportunity to reflect
on their beliefs about children literacy and to increase their knowledge
of teaching literacy (Whitmore, & Goodman, 1996). Teachers need to
consider the kinds of activities they bring to their classrooms to
improve children's literacy (Yoo, 1997). The value of teaching
language is that it stimulates teachers to reflect on their experiences,
what they know, what they are about, and what they should be about to
help children develop their literacy. Thus, when children become
literate, they can change their view of the world because they can
explain their perspectives in their own voices and listen to the stories
of others (Harste, 1989). There are individual differences among
teachers concerning how to develop child literacy (Goodman, 1989;
Maguire, 1989). Goodman (1986) also explains that there are two
different kinds of teachers in early childhood settings. One group
regards themselves as child centered, while the other group considers
themselves as basic-skill teachers. These groups view young
children's reading and writing development differently. Advocates
of the literacy education movement such as Church (1996), Goodman
(1989), Edelsky, Altwerger, & Floresl(1991), and Weaver(1990) have
argued against the traditional approach which emphasizes methods such as
phonics, the basal program, and skill practice and have argued for the
whole language approach, which is based on a holistic approach. Loughlin
and Martin (1988) also think that there is a close relationship between
early childhood education and the Whole language approach, that is,
early childhood educators are willing to use the whole language approach
in their classrooms because it explains education and learning in early
childhood settings such as child centered programs. The whole language
philosophy changes a teacher's beliefs and practices about teaching
literacy (Portelli, & Church, 1995). In the whole language paradigm,
teachers become facilitators, learners, observers, and partners for
children in education rather than using control and authority. Also,
children are encouraged to become active learners, curriculum designers,
decision maker and risktaker because the whole language approach
emphasizes optimal learning and ownership. Thus, with the whole language
approach, teachers can assume a variety of roles such as classroom
researcher, participant, coach, resource person, and, perhaps most
importantly, listener (Goodman, 1989; Edelsky, & Peterson, 1994).
Even if early childhood teachers have confidence in the effectiveness of
whole language practice in the classroom, they may still have
difficulties in persuading parents to understand and assist with the
whole language approach with their children.

With language teaching for young children, McCaslin (1989) believes
that since teachers are trying to focus on discovery learning more than
expository teaching, they need to provide a print rich environment for
children to learn independently. Also, Taylor, Blum, and Logsdon (1985)
suggest that teachers who are serious about the advantages of using the
transactional approach are not willing to use it in their classrooms. In
spite of increasing interest and enthusiasm regarding this approach in
the past two decades, there are significant barriers to using it among
teachers in early childhood education settings. Therefore, researchers
must continue to find factors which affect the use of language
approaches in early childhood education. The purpose of this research is
to investigate the variables which affect a teacher's beliefs
regarding teaching literacy in early childhood settings, and find
factors which influence a teacher's decision to apply the whole
language approach in their classroom. This research investigation
examined three major questions.

Research Questions

1. What is the impact of teacher characteristics on their beliefs
regarding teaching literacy in early childhood settings? The following
teacher variables were examined : educational degree, number of years of
teaching, experience of learning about the whole language approach.

2. What is the relationship between the teachers' beliefs
related to children's literacy and the following teacher
characteristics: educational degree, number of years of teaching,
experience of learning about the whole language approach, ages of
children that the teachers work with.

3. What is the difference of teachers' beliefs and attitude
toward language development and the way children develop their literacy
based on teachers' different view?

METHODOLOGY

This study utilized a quantitative and qualitative research design.
The data was gathered using the questionnaire, "Teachers'
Beliefs Related to Children's Literacy", designed specifically
for this study by Yoo (1998), using existing research on children's
literacy, and the interview with 10 teachers for qualitative data. The
questionnaire part of this survey had 35 Likert-type items and four
demographic items, and was distributed to 130 teachers at early
childhood settings in South Korea. Ninety-one responses were evaluated
by the researcher. The participants in this study were from early
childhood education settings within Seoul and Pusan, which are the
largest cities in South Korea. The first section of the questionnaire
asks for demographic information from the participants, including their
highest degree attained, the number of years they have taught, their
experience with the whole language approach and the ages of the children
that they work with. The second section of the questionnaire measures
the teachers' beliefs about teaching literacy, from strongly
disagree to strongly agree, i.e., 1= strongly disagree; 2 = disagree; 3=
slightly disagree; 4 = neutral; 5= slightly agree; 6 = agree, and 7 =
strongly agree. Of the teachers interviewed to obtain qualitative data
in this research, five had the highest scores while five had the lowest
scores on the qurstionnaire. Data analysis for this study was conducted
using SPSS. For reliability, the researcher used Crombach's alpha
coefficient (.85)

Analysis of the Quantitative Data

Results

The mean scores of all the teachers responding to the
Teachers' Beliefs Related to Children's Literacy questionnaire
(Table 1) show that teachers who had a high school degree had the lowest
mean score (170.00) while the teachers who had Master's degrees had
the highest mean score (218.00).

Hypothesis 1.1

There will be significant differences in the scores regarding a
teacher's beliefs related to children's literacy by a
teacher's highest degree earned.

This hypothesis was tested using a One-Way Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA) procedure. The data and results of the analysis related to
Hypothesis 1.1 are found in Table 2. The ANOVA results analyzing the
correlation between teacher's beliefs and their highest educational
degrees attained appears in Table 2.

The data in Table 2 indicates that a teacher's beliefs
regarding children's literacy differs significantly across the four
groups [F(3, 87)=6.46, pTable 3 shows the mean scores and variability for the questionnaire
by number of years of teaching. Teachers who had 0-2 years of teaching
experience had the lowest mean score (158.00) while teachers who had
more than 9 years teaching experience had the highest mean score
(232.00).

Hypothesis 1.2

There will be significant differences between the scores on a
teacher's beliefs related to children's literacy by the number
of years a teacher has taught.

The ANOVA results for the teachers' beliefs by years of
teaching appears in Table 4.

The data in Table 4 shows that the total scores were not
significantly different among teachers' levels of experience.
Teachers who had 5-8 years of teaching experience were not significantly
different on the questionnaire from the teachers who had 0-2 years of
experience.

The data in Table 5 indicates the mean scores on the questionnaire
for the two groups of teachers. Teachers who had no prior learning
experience with whole language had a mean score of 172.24 while teachers
who had prior experience had a mean score of 190.66

Hypothesis 1.3

There will be significant differences between the scores on a
teacher's beliefs related to children's literacy by a
teacher's prior experience of learning about the whole language
approach.

As Table 6 shows, the teachers who had learned about whole language
and teachers who had not learned about whole language had a significant
difference in scores on their beliefs about literacy. Those with prior
learning experience with the whole language approach had significantly
higher scores than the teachers with no prior understanding of the whole
language approach.

Hypothesis 2

There will be a relationship between teacher variables (i.e.,
highest educational degree attained, years of teaching, ages of children
which the teacher works with, prior experience with whole language) and
scores concerning beliefs related to children's literacy.

A multiple regression analysis (Table 7) indicates that a
teacher's highest educational degree attained earned and learning
experience of whole language were the two most influential determinants
regarding the scores of the teachers on their beliefs related to
children's literacy. In other words, the higher the educational
degree, the higher the score on the Teachers Beliefs Related to
Children's Literacy. Prior learning about whole language is also a
variable affecting the scores of teachers' beliefs about literacy.
Those variables contributed to the total variance of the scores of the
teachers' beliefs. However, the teachers' ages, years of
teaching, and ages of the children that they work with did not have any
influence on explain the scores of teachers' beliefs about
literacy.

Qualitative finding from in-depth interview

All audio-taped interviews data were transcribed in typewritten
format by the researcher to analyze the written interview data. This
researcher read the written interview data several times, makings
comments in the margin of the transcript. The results of interviews from
10 early childhood teachers are reported. The transcripts of 5teachers
obtained the highest score and the other 5 teachers got the low-est
score in the questionnaire

The finding consists of description of teachers' opinion with
different perspective based on children's effective language
learning and development.

These interview cases are presented to portray images of two
different perspectives of teachers who prefer a natural language
environment and phonics and skill- focused approaches.

The highest score of teachers' beliefs based on TBCL

These teachers included listening, speaking, writing, and reading
in all subject areas with these skills' order overlapping as the
child becomes capable of using them.

How Children Learn to Read and Write

Providing print environment Five teachers who obtained high score
at TBLCL in this study provided opportunities for children to have a
print rich literary environment. These teachers often mentioned that
children need to be exposed to materials such as paper, books, pencils,
markers, stencils, and labeling of every day items in classrooms. This
helps children develop their literacy by gaining experience with books
in order to read and listen to what they choose. These teachers had
confidence that teachers and parents must provide plenty of
opportunities to explore books or a variety of literature. These
teachers need to allow children access to books that they can look at by
themselves. Read labels and directions out loud. Talk to and discuss
things with children and engage them in conversation. Also they tried to
provide materials available for children to use such as letter stamps,
letter tracers, alphabet murals, pencils, and paper. They enjoyed
playing word games such as "I spy" to build vocabulary and
begin to draw attention to sounds letters make.

2) By enjoying the joy of books based on meaning: These three
teachers who got the highest score also have tendency to emphasize
valuing print. They believed that once children observe adults placing
value an reading books and writing stories and enjoying sharing these
with them as a special time, they also become to enjoy books and be
interested in learning to read and write. These high score teachers
appeared to want to read to children because the teachers themselves
enjoy reading and are also good readers. These teachers experience
pleasure and satisfaction from reading books and seem to share their own
positive attitude towards reading with the children they teach. They
were not just reading books in order to teach children to read but to
share their own love of reading. In a sense, they do not read to
children for the purpose of teaching them to read but to share the
desire to learn to read from enjoyment of books and stories and to share
the satisfaction of reading between teacher and children. These teachers
believe that they are avid readers who enjoy reading to children more
for pleasure as opposed to having to read to children as a requirement
to teach them to learn to read and write.

These teachers described common experience when they were young
with their morn. Having a joy of reading time with mom helps these
teachers have a passion to share books with their children in their
classroom. Thus, early experience with a joy of books is valuable for
children to become good readers in their life even as they become
adults.

Goodman (1986) has commented that "some of the most effective
whole language teachers are not sure they are whole language
teachers" (p.5). Therefore, even if they may not realize that they
use the whole language approach, their beliefs are based on the whole
language philosophy.

3) Understanding of language development Most of these teachers
believe that there is relationship among listening, speaking, reading,
and writing. These language relations are all connected in one way and
put together for successful development. Children seem to learn language
from children's books, stories, and learning poems to the part
which means from letters and sounds. Teachers generally emphasize
learning from large to small because children enjoy language through
reading children's books, stories, and learning poems. These
teachers indicated that children understand whole sentence or words
before learning each letter because they become familiar with the whole
book, story, or poem.

The lowest score of Teachers' Beliefs About Literacy

How Children Learn to Read and Write

1) By memorizing the alphabet and recognizing letters. Teachers
interviewed who got the lowest score in this study believed that
children need to practice from basic skills to memorize each individual
letter because children are able to read words based on their
recognition and shape of line which form each letter. Children need to
take time to repeat and practice through a long process to memorize each
line and shape. The effective way these teacher insisted is to trace and
copy letters with repetition and memorization.

Specially, I believed that children who are visually oriented and
memorize words via flash cards--television, and books which are read to
them. For those children who are auditorilly oriented, the phonetic
approach is easier. The child who possesses both auditory and visual
perception skills often combines these skills to read in early years.

These teachers also emphasized making the relationship between
letters and sounds to help children to learn letters. In order to read
books, children need to develop an awareness of the relationship between
sounds and letters in terms of these teachers' beliefs.

These teachers interviewed with a low score in this study also
believe that children are able to write and read after they can listen
and speak, this means children' listening and speaking are
important and necessary factor for learning to read and write. In other
words, children always proceed their development by the sequential
process of going from listening to speaking to reading and writing.
These teachers believe that children need to be able to recognize sounds
to learn to read, which they believe is an important factor to develop
children's literacy.

2) Learning Language Development from letter to sentence. These
teachers who obtained the lowest score in this study insisted that
children learn from the simple to the complex, thus, from part to whole.
Therefore, children learn the simple alphabet first, then as they
advance, they can move into complex words, and sentences. For example,

DISCUSSION

This study was designed to investigate teachers' beliefs about
children's literacy through quantitative research and qualitative
research. Additionally, this study found that there is a difference and
relationship between some teachers' characteristics as independent
variables and the scores of teachers' beliefs about literacy in
this research. The results and findings of the study support the theory
as well as previous research about teaching literacy to children
(Loughlin & Martin, 1987,). The following argument will present the
results of this study to influence and support previous research which
examined teachers' beliefs about teaching literacy based on the
whole language approach. The teachers who have a higher education
probably scored higher because they may have had more opportunities to
learn about the whole language approach in college. In other words, the
higher the degree, the higher the score. A teacher's level of
experience, however, did not significantly correlate with the score
regarding belief, so experience alone does not explain a teacher's
score on the questionnaire.

When teachers realize that whole language approach is an ideology
which empowers teachers, they are able to develop their own critical
perspective based on this philosophy of whole language approach.
Therefore, a teacher comes to understand how children develop their own
literacy through the process of reflection.

These findings support other researchers' findings that
teachers have a different perspective for teaching literacy based on
their preference for the whole language approach (Goodman, 1989; Grave,
1983; Maguire, 1989; Newman, 1985; Taylor, Blum, & Logsdon, 1985).

The third finding from qualitative data is that the high score
teachers emphasize a print-rich environment, valuing print by using a
natural context and communicating with young children to encourage their
ownership in learning and by respecting children's voices. However,
the lowest teachers mainly use the phonics approach and teach isolated
letters and believe that children learn best when they memorize and
identify individual letters and words. In contrast, the high score
teachers emphasize meaning to develop literacy. Teachers who obtained
high scores in this study regard children's real lives as a
meaningful way to learn and use because children relate their learning
to their lives outside as well as inside the classroom. They believe
that teachers must encourage children to share ideas related real life
for a creative learning experience.

Teachers and children as partners must develop an atmosphere of the
"alive" classroom andlearn in the real life to understand our
worlds.

The teachers who obtained the highest score in this study seem more
likely to read to children because they deserve it, they want to read to
them as they themselves are avid readers. Thus, they value the
advantages of children's books for their beauty, meaning, and
emotional feeling in our lives. These teachers want to pursue meaning in
their lives based on their reading books with children. However, the
lowest score teachers in this study believed that children must be
fluent readers and skilled writers because language is required for
children to become successful in this society. These teachers did not
have a positive attitude towards reading books and did not seem likely
to show their passion to experience joy of books with children. Thus,
these teachers emphasize reading fluency for children to master literacy
skills to be fluent readers and writers who will increase their profit
in our society. In other words, the teachers' beliefs toward
literacy is close related to teachers' attitude toward literacy. In
this study, the teachers who got high score on their beliefs seem to
relate learning more to life while teachers who obtained low score and
have learned about whole language do not have this holistic approach to
life and teaching.

The knowledge of whole language appeared to be a important source
in helping teachers become whole language teachers, but more meaningful
than learning experience of whole language was the teachers'
positive attitude and perspective toward the value of enjoying language.
Therefore, even though teachers can choose to use part of the whole
language approach when they children, without changing the philosophy
which affects their attitudes and beliefs, they are still traditional
teachers based on phonics and skill focus.

Thus, it is hard to change teachers' deep rooted perceptions
of learning and teaching about language because they teach the way the
learned language from a young age to their college years. Teachers need
to experience a reflection to change their perspective and practice in
their real teaching settings. Moreover, changing teachers' beliefs
toward language involve teachers thinking reflectively about their
teaching and their whole life and empowers them to have a critical
perspective based on this philosophy. In a new view of language
learning, empowering teachers experience the process of reflection to
understand how children develop their own literacy in a natural learning
context.

Thus, the learning experience of the whole language approach
appeared as a meaningful factor with helping teachers become whole
language teachers, but the more important thing was the influence on a
teacher's attitude and perspective rather than a teacher's
knowledge of whole language. Thus, even if some of these teachers decide
to use part of the whole language approach without understanding the
philosophy, which influences their perspective and beliefs, they are
still traditional teachers because whole language is not a methodology.

I believe that young children learn
to recognize words and sentences
and build their receptive vocabularies.
When children express
themselves they usually speak single
words first, then phrases and
later, sentences. When they begin to
read, they tend to pick out individual
letters first and simple words that
they see often. As they begin to try
to write, they often write individual
letters first and later try to write
words. This is usually quickly followed
by children asking how to
write sentences in order to label their
work.
The lowest teachers in this study
emphasized repetition and memorization.
The method teachers frequently use
with children is that they encourage
children to practice and trace each
isolated letter to memorize it. These
teachers also believed that children
can learn best when children copy
the alphabet and trace letters by line
to memorize each letter. These teachers
think that a child first learns
sounds, then by putting sounds to
words, and sentences, then letters.
That's why they encourage children
to practice many letters to memorize
each word. Also, they insisted
on this premise that reading, writing,
speaking and listening are all
part of literacy. In order to be able
to read a child needs to be able to listen
to how letters form sounds and
then be able to speak them and hear
how they sound. Knowing how to
write the letters also enables the child
to associate letters' sounds and the
importance they make when putting
them together into a word.